EXCLUSIVE – RGA GOING ON OFFENSE IN WISCONSIN: The Republican Governors Association will begin airing an ad today that attacks the two leading Democratic candidates vying to replace Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin’s recall election. A 30-second spot uses an elevator as a metaphor to define former Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and former Dane County Executive (aka “Madison liberal”) Kathleen Falk as tax-and-spenders who killed jobs. They’re not publicly disclosing the buy size, but the RGA says its substantial and they don’t screw around. The committee was the largest outside spender in helping elect Walker in 2010 (more than $5 million) and will likely again be the dominant pro-Walker force in 2012. While other groups have engaged with pro-Walker ads and some have begun attacking Walker, the RGA will be the first to begin the “real” phase of the campaign – defining the incumbent’s potential opponents. The Democratic primary is scheduled for May 8, and the recall vote itself will likely happen June 5. The ad is the centerpiece of a new microsite called HigherTaxesFewerJobs.com, which includes research hits on both Democrats. Watch: http://bit.ly/GPiqg3.

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FIRST IN SCORE – RON PAUL VIDEO USES ETCH-A-SKETCH TO PAINT RIVALS AS UNSERIOUS: A 40-second web video being released today by the Texas congressman uses the flap to paint all three of his opponents as unserious. It contrasts clips of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum waving the red toy around at rallies against the serious problems facing the country: $15 trillion in debt, 12 million Americans unemployed and a country at war. Set to action music, the question pops on screen: “Tired of the games?” It closes by saying that Paul is the only candidate with a serious plan. The campaign will blast it out to their targeted email lists and put it on conservative websites. “Conservatives and Constitutionalists have been long been concerned about Governor Romney’s track record of position changes and flip-flops, and his top adviser’s slip of the tongue only reinforced this point,” says Paul campaign chairman Jesse Benton. “It is equally off-putting to see Mr. Santorum and Mr. Gingrich react like carnival barkers, not the statesmen American needs.” Watch the 40-second video: http://bit.ly/GR2aaZ.

PUBLIC POLICY POLLING (survey in the field through last night): Santorum, 42; Romney, 28; Gingrich, 18; Paul, 8; Roemer, 2.

NEWT DEATH WATCH, DAY 10: PPP Democratic pollster Tom Jensen notes in his analysis of the poll that Romney is getting about the same vote share in the poll as he did at the ballot box in Mississippi and Alabama. “The big difference though is that conservative voters appear to be abandoning Gingrich for Santorum now, and that's why Louisiana is likely to be much more lopsided than either of last week's contests were. If Gingrich was completely out of the race Santorum would have a 22 point lead, 53-31, over Romney.” The full analysis includes some fresh polling on religion and the New Orleans Saints’ bounty program: http://bit.ly/GIDinN.

MEDIA COVERAGE UNIVERSALLY ASSUMES SANTORUM WIN: The Wall Street Journal headline says “Louisiana unlikely to join Romney parade,” for example. “This is likely to be Rick Santorum territory, a state where household income is relatively low and the share of conservative voters is high, similar to other states where the former Pennsylvania senator has claimed victories, such as Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Oklahoma,” the paper writes in a curtain-raiser: http://on.wsj.com/GJEP8v.

TIMES-PICAYUNE EMPHASIZES OFFSHORE DRILLING ISSUE: “The political sun is shining on Louisiana,” Jonathan Tilove writes in today’s New Orleans paper. “All four remaining candidates will be campaigning in the state Friday. And the only issue anyone, from President Barack Obama on, seems to be talking about is energy. The questions that preoccupy Louisiana day in, day out, year in, year out, are now front and center for every American, and might dominate the 2012 presidential election… What separates the Republican candidates more than anything is the messianic passion that Santorum brings to the issue, identifying himself as the only genuine climate-science denier in the bunch.” http://bit.ly/GHKFJP.

WHERE ALL FOUR REPUBLICANS ARE STUMPING IN LOUISIANA TODAY –

Santorum starts his day with a 10 a.m. rally at the sheriff’s shooting range in Monroe. Then he has a 1:30 rally at the Shreveport Holiday Inn and a 7 p.m. rally at Louisiana College in Pineville.

Romney has a 9:30 a.m. rally at Clearview Mall in Metairie and a 2:40 event at QEP Resources in Shreveport. [Thursday’s Score incorrectly reported his Friday schedule.]

Gingrich delivers a speech on energy policy at 10:30 a.m. at the Port Fourchon Operations Center. After trying to avoid traveling national press of late, he’ll have a media avail after. Then he has a 2:30 Hispanic Roundtable in Kenner, Louisiana, and a 4 p.m. town hall at Tulane in New Orleans.

Paul has two town halls on two campuses today: 1 p.m. at Louisiana College in Pineville and 7 p.m. at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond. Details: http://politi.co/nKs8EW

CHICAGO VERSUS BOSTON – ENTITLEMENT FIGHT WILL DRIVE THE DAY:

ROMNEY TELLS NATIONAL REVIEW HE’S ON “THE SAME PAGE” AS PAUL RYAN: National Review’s Robert Costa got a sit-down with Romney yesterday in DC. Asked about his private meeting with the Wisconsin congressman, the former Massachusetts governor said: “We’re very much inclined in the same direction. We spoke together about my plans on Medicare, for instance, and ultimately the Wyden-Ryan bill is very similar, if not identical, to what I proposed some time ago. We all have ideas about what should be done with Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security — and we’re on the same page on those issues.” Then he added that the plans are “similar, not identical.”

MITT PLEDGES OBAMACARE REPEAL IN USA TODAY OP-ED: On the two year anniversary of health care and ahead of the Supreme Court oral arguments, Romney writes that “President Obama’s program is an unfolding disaster for the American economy, a budget-busting entitlement, and a dramatic new federal intrusion into our lives.” How he handles Romneycare: “When I was governor of Massachusetts, we instituted a plan that got our citizens insured without raising taxes and without a government takeover. Other states will choose to go in different directions.” The third soundbyte: “Whatever the Supreme Court decides about the constitutionality of ObamaCare, we already know that it is bad policy and wrong for America.” http://usat.ly/GHpx6v

Speaking of the health care law, THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN released a three-and-a-half-minute web video yesterday to celebrate the two-year anniversary: http://politi.co/GHwmoJ.

SNEAK PEEK – BIDEN CAMPAIGNING ON MEDICARE IN FLORIDA TODAY: The vice president will focus on seniors with a speech at Wynmoor Village in Coconut Creek, Florida, today. Talking about Medicare, he’ll attack Paul Ryan’s budget and frame it as a key part of the general election contrast. Excerpts: “The American people won't be fooled. They know there's a fundamental difference between us and the Republicans. We believe in strengthening Medicare. They don't. Make no mistake: If Republicans in Congress and their amen corner of Romney, Santorum, and Gingrich get their hands on the White House, they will end Medicare as we know it.”

BIDEN PLANS TO GO AFTER ROMNEY BY NAME – FROM HIS PREPARED REMARKS: “Mitt Romney also supports something the Republican leaders in Congress call ‘cut, cap, and balance.’ Of course, nobody knows what it means… and that’s exactly what they intend. Because like so many of the most damaging things, it looks and sounds innocuous. So, let’s cut through it and say it in plain English. The ‘cut’ is cutting Social Security. The ‘cap’ is putting a cap on what we ask the wealthiest Americans to pay in taxes. And the ‘balance’ is balancing the budget on the backs of seniors and middle class Americans…When these guys cut Social Security and voucherize Medicare, they’re not saving the next generation. They’re thrusting the burden on the next generation. They’re making it even harder for the middle class at a time when we know, if we want our economy to be strong, the middle class has to be strong.”

VPOTUS HEADING TO IOWA: The Des Moines Register says Biden is coming to Iowa next Wednesday for a reelection campaign event. http://dmreg.co/GP5J02

ETCHGATE, 48 HOURS LATER –

PEGGY NOONAN IS DISHEARTENED – HER ADVICE TO ROMNEY: “Suit up and get serious,” she writes in her column for Saturday’s Wall Street Journal. “Now that everyone knows you'll be the nominee, get off the goofball express. Cheesy grits, jeans, singing, being compulsively pleasant, calling your opponents lightweights—enough. Use the next few months to get back to basics. Why do you want to be president again? Is the answer, ‘Because I'm a great fellow and it's the top job’? Dig down deep for a better reason! Here's something Americans intuit about motivations in presidential politics. When a candidate is on a mission to rescue the country, they can tell. When it's about the nation and not him, they can tell. When he has a general philosophy of government and politics, they will listen, and give a fair hearing… It is not fatal that Mr. Romney has been tagged as Etch A Sketchy.” http://on.wsj.com/GJBGVL

JOE KLEIN SAYS IT WILL STICK: “Eric Fehrnstrom’s etch-a-sketch gaffe yesterday may go well beyond a momentary embarrassment and become a campaign-defining disaster, much as John Kerry’s ‘I voted for it before I voted against it’ gaffe–which came at almost exactly the same point in that campaign, as Kerry locked down the nomination–was in 2004,” he writes for Time. “It makes it much harder, perhaps impossible, for Romney to begin to tack back to the center to appeal to the centrist voters, an absolute necessity for the fall campaign after the free-range extremism of the Republican primary. Every time Romney makes a move, or even a head-fake, it becomes an Etch-a-Sketch moment.” http://ti.me/GIyPBk

SANTORUM SUGGESTS OBAMA MIGHT BE BETTER THAN ROMNEY: "If they're going to be a little different, we might as well stay with what we have instead of taking a risk of what may be the Etch A Sketch candidate for the future,” he said in Texas. The Romney and Gingrich campaigns pounced: http://on.freep.com/GJGKda.

ROMNEY PUSHED ENERGY POLICIES HE NOW ATTACKS OBAMA FOR: The New Republic looks at Romney’s evolution on energy policy. As the improving jobs picture forces him to act outraged about high gas prices, Alec MacGillis writes: “Befitting his profile as a moderate Republican who cared about the environment, Governor Romney responded to price spikes by describing them as the natural result of global market pressures and by calling for increases in fuel efficiency—the same approach that he now derides Obama for taking as president. At moments, Romney went so far as to make high gas prices out to be a welcome reality for the foreseeable future, one that people needed to learn to live with.” BuzzFeed separately reports that Romney raised a gas tax by 400%: http://bit.ly/GHVFtO. The deeper TNR dive: http://bit.ly/GPqeyt.

BOSTON SHIFTED SPENDING FROM ADS TO FUNDRAISING IN FEBRUARY: The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein studies the campaign’s spending reports from last month and notes a strategic shift in spending. Going into the month “running an operational debt of about $397,000 each day, … the campaign took more than $6 million out of its advertising budget, leaving Romney without the same airwave and online advantage that he had enjoyed in earlier contests…The Romney presidential campaign also stripped money away from promotional items and stopped renting out fancy facilities. The amount of travel done by aides was cut dramatically and the budget for polling was slashed by nearly $300,0000. In its place, millions of dollars were devoted to securing new donors, regardless of income bracket…About $1.28 million more was spent on fundraising consulting in February than had been spent in January.” http://huff.to/GJrn4s

THE NARRATIVE – JIM DEMINT OFFERS SOMETHING CLOSE TO A ROMNEY ENDORSEMENT: “We all need to look at this presidential primary and encourage the candidates to do a little self-reflection here on what’s good for our country,” the South Carolina conservative told reporters after a morning sit-down with the front-runner. “The sooner we can make a decision, the sooner we can focus on the real problem, which is [President Barack] Obama.” Saying he expects the prolonged and often heated presidential battle to end “pretty soon,” DeMint added: “There’s no need to drag this to a convention if it’s pretty clear who our nominee is.”

REPUBLICAN ESTABLISHMENT RALLYING AROUND ROMNEY: “Romney very much wants to create an aura of inevitability. Locking in more support from establishment Republicans to supplement his coffers will add to the sense that the party is falling in line behind his candidacy,” Jonathan Martin writes (with feeds from five of our folks on the Hill). “Romney began his day in the capitol with a standing-room-only breakfast, raising about $400,000 and hobnobbing with the largest group of lawmakers he’s drawn yet to a fundraiser event…Romney shared a light moment at the breakfast, which was held in the Hyatt Regency Washington, when 88-year-old Rep. Ralph Hall (R-Texas) told him that he had‘never met a Mormon I didn’t like’ and noted that Latter-day Saints teetotalers ‘give me those airplane bottles of booze when we’re on a flight.’ Romney laughed good-naturedly with the oldest member of the House.” http://politi.co/GTEiTa

DUELING MEMOS ON DELEGATE MATH –

ROMNEY POLITICAL DIRECTOR RICH BEESON: “The remaining contests offer no path to 1,144 for Senator Santorum, a fact which even he has acknowledged. Each day Senator Santorum continues to march up this steep hill of improbability is a day we lose to unite in our effort as Republicans to defeat President Obama. So as Senator Santorum continues to drag out this already expensive, negative campaign it is clear that he is becoming the most valuable player on President Obama’s team.” http://bit.ly/GHL7Zj

SANTORUM SUPER PAC EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR NICK RYAN: “We do not see a reasonable path for any of the current candidates to clinch the nomination prior to Tampa… Romney currently has 344 delegates by our count. If he continues to accumulate bound delegates at the same rate (49% of bound delegates) moving forward, he will add approximately 450 of the 918 delegates still to be bound. This would give Romney only 799 delegates going into Tampa. Ryan’s 39-page memo for the Red, White and Blue Fund goes state-by-state: http://bit.ly/GOKM5p.

SANTORUM SCRUTINY – JEWS FOR JESUS PAID HIM $6K FOR SPEECH: “In 2010 Rick Santorum was paid to speak to a controversial religious group unpopular with some Jewish leaders because it seeks to convince Jews to accept Jesus,” Ken Vogel scoops. “The Messianic Jewish Alliance of America paid Santorum $6,000 to speak at its 2010 annual conference, according to a filing released Wednesday showing a total of nearly $95,000 in speaking fees that Santorum previously failed to disclose…Some Jewish leaders have denounced Messianic Judaism as ‘religious fraud’ intended to convert Jews to Christianity.” http://politi.co/GRaEPf

PREVIEWING WISCONSIN – PRIMARY IS APRIL 3: “All things being equal, Wisconsin may be the closest thing in the GOP race to a level playing field next month,” writes the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Craig Gilbert. “It offers Santorum the chance to win a major Midwest battleground with an overlapping coalition of rural voters, social conservatives and blue-collar voters.” Tommy Thompson is quoted in the story: "If Sen. Santorum can't do well in Wisconsin, it’s over.” Some cool graphics comparing the Badger State’s demographics to the other Midwestern states that have voted so far: http://bit.ly/GJwill.

WHAT THE PRESIDENT IS UP TO: At 11:45 p.m. ET, “the President will depart the White House en route Seoul, Republic of Korea.” Until then, it should be a quiet day on the public front.

PLOTTING A COMEBACK? – KUCINICH TO VISIT WASHINGTON STATE: Roll Call reports that “Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is heading back to Washington state next month, stoking speculation he might be considering a comeback bid on the West Coast. Kucinich will address a forum on protecting Social Security at Highline Community College on April 12…But this may not be just any cross-country speaking trip. Last year, Kucinich flirted with running for a new House seat in the Evergreen State before seeking re-election in a redrawn Ohio district against his longtime colleague, Rep. Marcy Kaptur.” Then he lost by 14 points. http://bit.ly/GS7B7p

IOWA HOUSE – DID STEVE KING ADMIT FAST & FURIOUS IS POLITICAL?: “Tea Party Caucus member Steve King (R-Iowa) said Republican leadership is wary of using investigations it’s conducting of the administration for political gain, especially when it comes to Operation Fast and Furious, a botched gun-tracking program,” The Hill reports. “I think leadership doesn’t want to be seen as using the gavels here for political purposes,” King told the paper in an interview. “I think there’s a bit of an aversion to that. Me? I have no reservations about that. This is politics.” http://bit.ly/GQ9pND

THE HOUSE – DONALD TRUMP PLANS ENDORSEMENTS: The wealthy mogul tweeted support yesterday for Ron DeSantis, a Republican candidate running for Congress in Florida. He called DeSantis “very impressive.” One Trump advisor tells Score that The Donald will be active in a small but important number of House races.

LIGHTER CLICKS –

BEN STEIN recorded a campaign commercial for the Bush 2000 campaign that never ran in which he reprised his role as the teacher in “Ferris Bueler’s Day Off” to mock Al Gore’s lack of accomplishments. The New York Times posts the 30-second spot for a story on ads that never go on the air: http://nyti.ms/GQju0Z.

THE 1994 OPPOSITION RESEARCH FILE ON SANTORUM, assembled by the campaign of then Sen. Harris Wofford, is 180 pages. Huffington Post found it in Wofford’s papers at Bryn Mawr College. Scroll to the bottom to read the full PDF: http://huff.to/GPpER8.

MITT ROMNEY told National Review that he’s reading two books — Destiny of the Republic, by Candice Millard, about the assassination of President James Garfield, and Mornings on Horseback, by David McCullough, about the young Theodore Roosevelt. “I always try to read two books at a time,” he said. “I try to read one for fun and entertainment, for when just before I hit the bed, and the other is usually for education.” [Your Morning Score correspondent listened to the former on CD while driving across South Carolina in January and read the latter more than a decade ago.] The NR interview: http://bit.ly/GJro8x. Overview of the Roosevelt book: http://politi.co/GJs4uA. Overview of the Garfield book: http://politi.co/GToboB.

BARACK OBAMA got heckled during his Ohio State by a raving man insistent that he read some book. “Show me some courtesy,” the president told him, instructing aides to retrieve the book. Video: http://politi.co/GJxKnV.

MICHELLE OBAMA’s book on gardening won’t come out until May 29. The cover and a blog post about the delayed publication date: http://bit.ly/GS19gG.

NFL BOUNTIES are going to get scrutinized in a clearly-designed-for-ESPN-coverage hearing to be held by a Senate Judiciary subcommittee chaired by Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin: http://politi.co/GQcFMU.

HUNGER GAMES comes out in theatres today. Matt Yglesias writes in Slate on the economics of Panem: http://slate.me/GHQ6ZO.

MARK LEIBOVICH, one of the New York Times’ best writers, gets on A1 today with a memo about how Obama’s love for sports helps him appeal to normal people. Its pegged to March Madness: http://nyti.ms/GQcXPR.

CODA – QUOTE OF THE DAY: “For women between 30 and 50, he's got a Voldemort quality.” – A veteran Republican strategist in a piece on who Santorum might pick as his running mate http://bit.ly/GLe2fr

Authors:

About The Author

James Hohmann is a reporter for POLITICO Pro.

He covered the 2012 presidential campaign from start to finish, authoring the daily Morning Score tipsheet for nearly two years as he reported from 23 states over the course of the primaries and general election. Through the fall, he traveled with Mitt Romney.

Hohmann spent 2010 chronicling the Republican Party’s drive to win control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

He arrived from The Washington Post at the end of 2009. Previously he wrote for the Los Angeles Times Washington bureau, the Dallas Morning News and The San Jose Mercury News.

An honors graduate of Stanford University, Hohmann studied American political history. He served as editor-in-chief of The Stanford Daily and wrote an award-winning thesis about the 1976 Republican primaries and the political ascendancy of Ronald Reagan.